Seven killed, 14 injured in Iraq violence

DPA Baghdad, April 29 (DPA) At least seven people were killed and 14 injured in separate attacks, including twin suicide bombings by women, in Iraq Tuesday. Sounds of sporadic explosions and shooting were also heard in east Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City district.

In the restive Diyala province, north-east of Baghdad, at least six people were killed and 13 injured in attacks, according to security officials.

In one attack, a woman suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt targeted the motorcade of the head of the Sadiyah municipality near his office, a police source told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The official, Ahmed Zarqushi, was injured along with five of his companions, one of whom later died of his wounds, VOI reported.

Another woman suicide bomber also wearing an explosives belt targeted an office of a tribal police unit in Muqdadiyah, killing two tribal policemen and injuring five, the police said.

Separately, gunmen shot dead three civilians in Jalawla while three soldiers were injured by a bomb that hit their patrol in Baldroz, according to the police.

In Baghdad, Dia Jawdi Jabir, a senior official from Iraq’s ministry of labour and social affairs, was killed by a bomb outside his house in the western Shaljiyah area, a ministry spokesman told VOI.

The official’s son was critically injured.

In Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the sounds of explosions and shootings were heard, eyewitnesses said.

Fighting has been raging in the densely populated slum area since the end of March between militiamen and US and Iraqi troops.

The US military said it killed 38 militiamen in attacks in Sadr City Sunday evening. DPA